Energy companies provide power to consumers via power generation units. A power generation unit may be a coal-fired power plant, a hydro-electric power plant, a gas turbine and a generator, a diesel engine and a generator, a nuclear power plant, and the like. The power is transmitted to consumers via a transmission and distribution system that may include power lines, power transformers, protective switches, sectionalizing switches, other switches, breakers, reclosers, and the like. The transmission and distribution system forms at least one, and possibly more, electrical paths between the generation units and power consumers (e.g., homes, businesses, offices, street lights, and the like).
Severe weather conditions such as hurricanes, ice storms, lightning storms, and the like can cause disruptions of power flow to consumers (i.e., power outages). For example, high winds or ice can knock trees into overhead power lines, lightning can damage transformers, switches, power lines, and so forth. While some power outages may be of short-term duration (e.g., a few seconds), many power outages require physical repair or maintenance to the transmission and distribution system before the power can be restored. For example, if a tree knocks down a home's power line, a maintenance crew may have to repair the downed power line before power can be restored to the home. In the meantime, consumers are left without power, which is at least inconvenient but could be serious in extreme weather conditions (e.g., freezing cold weather conditions). In many circumstances, therefore, it is very important to restore power quickly.
Large storms often cause multiple power outages in various portions of the transmission and distribution system. In response, electric utilities typically send maintenance crews into the field to perform the repairs. If the storm is large enough, maintenance crews are often borrowed from neighboring electric utilities and from external contracting agencies. Dispatching the crews in an efficient manner, therefore, is important to the quick and efficient restoration of power.
Conventional techniques for maintenance crew dispatch include dispatching the crews straight from a central operation center. Once the storm hits, the electric utility then determines where to send the crews based on telephone calls from consumers. Conventional outage management systems log customer calls and dispatch crews to the site of the disturbance based on the customer calls. The engines of conventional outage management systems typically assume that calls from customers that are near each other are associated with a single disturbance or power outage. These conventional outage management systems do not function well under severe weather scenarios for various reasons.
Additionally, conventional outage management systems provide an estimated time to restore a particular section of a power circuit based on historical crew response times only. For example, a suburban customer may be given an estimated time to restore of 2 hours while a rural customer may be given an estimated time to restore of 4 hours. These times are typically based on the historical times for crew to be dispatched and repair an outage. These conventional systems fail to provide accurate estimates for large storms. That is, conventional systems assume that a crew will be dispatched to the outage in a short period of time. With large storms, however, there may be a significant time delay before a crew is sent to a particular outage location (as there are typically multiple outages occurring at the same time).
Thus, there is a need for systems, methods, and the like, to facilitate efficiently dispatching maintenance crews in severe weather situations and for providing an estimated time to restore power to a particular customer that works well for large storms.